Home Safe by Elizabeth Berg Read Free Book Online

say this. Anthropologie? You're almost sixty years old! Why would you want to work there? Why don't you stop being so self-obsessed and volunteer for some organization that really needs you? Give back a little.”
    Helen, wounded, sucks in a breath, clenches the phone tighter in her hand.
    “I didn't mean that to be as harsh as it came out,” Midge says. “This is tough love, okay?”
    “I do give back! I give lots of money to all kinds of—”
    “I don't mean checks in an envelope,” Midge says. “I mean you should give of yourself . Volunteer to stack cans at a food pantry. Deliver Meals on Wheels. Walk dogs at a shelter. There are a million places to volunteer! Teach someone to read, for God's sake!”
    “I can't do that,” Helen says. “Every time I try to volunteer, they tell me they need a certain commitment, and when my life is normal , I work a lot, and I can't tell what day is going to be a really good writing day when I won't want to stop. And I also travel a lot for public speaking. I have a speaking gig in a few weeks, as a matter of fact. Though I'm thinking of canceling it.”
    “Why?”
    “Because I'm a fraud, that's why.”
    “You're not a fraud,” Midge says. “If you can't write for the time being, so what? Go out and live some life. That's what will give you the seeds to sow for the work you will come to do.”
    It occurs to Helen to ask Midge if she's having a Kumbaya moment. Instead, she looks out the window, where a bird has landed on a branch of a tree outside. The bird stares directly ahead, as though at her, cocking its head left, then right. How about it? How about sowing some seeds?
    “Midge, it's … I need writing. Not the success, the success just makes me feel weird. Grateful , but weird. Writing to me is … It's not just the way I make my living. It's always been the place where I put things. It's my solace in a world that … God! It just seems like such a terrible world!”
    “It is a terrible world,” Midge says. “Also it is one of incalculable beauty. You know that.”
    “I have forgotten that,” Helen says and hears the bitterness in her voice.
    “That's why you have to do something to remember it.”
    “I have to go,” Helen says.
    “No, you don't. You're just pissed off.”
    Helen doesn't answer. She bites at her lip and watches the bird, who suddenly lifts off from the branch and flies away.
    “Aren't you?”
    “Well, I have to say, Midge, that you don't seem to be very supportive of the fact that I seem to be losing my mind! I really feel like I am!”
    “Hmm,” Midge says. “Now, why would I ever want to be supportive of you losing your mind?”
    “Oh, you just … Look, I know you want me to be King Kong, but I'm not King Kong. I'm the princess and the pea, okay? I would feel the pea, I swear. I don't want to feel the pea, but I would feel it! Did you ever hear of Gregor Mendel? Some people—”
    “Oh, stop using the theory of genetics as a rationalization. Get dressed and meet me at the Museum of Contemporary Art in an hour,” Midge says.
    “How do you know I'm not dressed?”
    “Took a wild guess. I would also wildly guess that you haven't washed your face or combed your hair. Or even looked at the newspaper, as usual.”
    “Okay, in fact I do look at the newspaper, and I usually elect not to read it. Why should I read it! It would only make me feel worse. Why don't they have a Pollyanna column, where the only news there is good news: humanitarian triumphs, small gestures of goodwill, recipes, who cares, just one place where you know you can go and read something and not feel assaulted?”
    “Maybe you should write such a column,” Midge says.
    “Maybe you should remember that I can't write.” Helen fumes quietly for a moment, then says, “Fine, I'll meet you at the museum. What's there?”
    “An exhibit that's live people, and all they do is kiss.”
    Helen recalls a time she was sixteen and made a bet that she could kiss for ten